Free How to Save Your Own Life by Erica Jong

on up Madison Avenue. It’s one of those hot June days when the air feels slightly wet, and you feel like you’re swimming, not walking. I linger, gaze in shop windows, stop in a fancy Italian boutique to try on a pair of expensive sandals I know I won’t buy, stop in a drug store to buy contraceptive jelly and a bottle of perfumed body oil (I am going to see Jeffrey Rudner later), stop at a florist’s to buy a long-stemmed rose for Hope, my fairy godmother.
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    Hope is exactly twenty years older than me, born on March 26, 1922, and ours is one of those curious old family connections. Her mother, now a terrifically bouncy old lady named Selma (who also appears to have cornered the market on kvetching), had an affair with my grandfather, circa 1908. Both of them deny it—but Hope found the letters to prove it. When pinned down, Papa will only say, “Well, Selma was an anarchist, a follower of Emma Goldman,” and Selma will say: “Ach—Stoloff—all he ever does is talk, talk, talk. Believe me, if you want to know from affairs, I could tell you better ones than that.” And she could. But the fact is, Hope and I are convinced that, cosmically speaking, we are sisters. There are too many coincidences. The same birthday, a mother and grandfather who were lovers, identical taste in poetry, jokes, food. All the really important things. And, of course, sex. Unlike my mother, who seemed to regard sex as a barterable commodity, Hope always understood that there’s nothing wrong with being an easy lay. Except that she’s also a romantic, and when she falls in love (as she is now with a second husband she met at the age of fifty) she is completely, delightedly monogamous. We have that in common too: being romantics. And yet through all the crazy, guilty little affairs I had during the denouement of my marriage to Bennett, she was immensely comforting. I would come to her with my guilt, my misgivings, my constant chafing to leave, and she would say: “Let it be. Float. When you’re ready to leave, you’ll leave. Don’t punish yourself.” She knows me like she knows herself. All that Jewish guilt. That constant appeasing of the evil eye. If something good happens, something bad is right around the corner. If you have pleasure, watch out for pain. If sex is good, you’re going to get clap or pregnant or caught.
    Hope had been a background figure in my life throughout my childhood. I heard about her from my grandparents and parents, but never really got to know her. She was referred to as “Poor Hope,” apparently because she married a musician who “never made a leeving,” as my grandmother said. But instead of dumping him—as any sensible Jewish girl would have done—she stayed with him and supported him. This was thought to be a sign of great foolhardiness. Hope was extremely attractive to men, was highly thought of as an editor, and made a good living. My grandparents clucked their tongues over her guilelessness. How could she stay married to that bongo drummer from Rego Park? Love is love, but marriage is an investment. And for an attractive woman to squander her “best years” on a bongo drummer from Rego Park could only be a sign of weakness. “Poor Hope. She’s too good.”
    But poor Hope knew more than any of them. She understood that the cornucopia returns upon itself. She was always immensely generous with her money, her love, her time. The result was thousands of friends, a life crammed with lovers, and, at mid-century, an idyllic romance with a man who turned out to be her mental and emotional double. My mother and grandmother, who hoarded and calculated their love, my sisters, who chose their husbands at eighteen and never budged, wound up with less than Hope, who gave everything away. She was a human potlatch. Gifts dropped from her like fruit from a tree. You dared not admire anything in her home or office